China’s association with the Olympic movement progressed slowly in the early years. The first Chinese member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Wang Zhengting, was elected in 1922 at the 21st IOC Session Meeting in Paris. It was not until 1932, however, that China actually sent a delegation to the Olympics, the Games of the X Olympiad, held in Los Angeles. Three months before those Games, Chinese newspapers suddenly reported that the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuguo), created by the Japanese in China’s Northeast (Manchuria), was planning to send two athletes. People throughout China expressed their anger and resentment over this. Under fire from the public, China’s Nationalist government quickly decided to send a delegation, which included only one athlete, runner Liu Changchun, to the Games. Although Liu failed to qualify in the 100-metre event after his long ocean journey, he became the first Chinese athlete to compete in the Olympic Games, and thus the 1932 Los Angeles Games became the first Olympics for China.

The First Medals

After the Chinese communists took control of mainland China, establishing the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and the Nationalist government (Republic of China, ROC) fled to Taiwan, the question of which side should represent China at the Olympic Games became a big political issue. From the PRC’s point of view, two Olympic Committees representing one nation violated the Olympic Charter, and thus it refused to participate in the Games for some two decades. During that time, the ROC maintained its position on the IOC, and athletes from Taiwan participated under the name of China in several Games in different countries. Yang Ch’uan-kuang (Pinyin: Yang Chuanguang), an athlete from Taiwan, won a silver medal in the men’s decathlon at the 1960 Rome Games, the first medal ever won by a Chinese participant in the Olympics. In 1968 Chi Cheng (Pinyin: Ji Zheng), also from Taiwan, won a bronze medal in the women’s 80-metre hurdles in the Mexico City Games, becoming the first female Chinese athlete to win an Olympic medal.

The First Gold Medals

In October 1979 the Executive Committee of the IOC reinstated the PRC’s membership on that committee, while Taiwan was allowed to compete under the name Chinese Taipei. Because the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led many countries to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics became the first Summer Games to which the PRC sent a delegation. The delegation consisted of 353 members, with 224 athletes participating in 16 events. Sharpshooter Xu Haifeng won a gold medal in the men’s 50-metre pistol event and became the first Chinese in Olympic history to win the highest honour. In addition, Wu Xiaoxuan won a gold medal in the women’s 50-metre rifle three-positions shooting competition, becoming the first Chinese woman to win a gold medal. Their success was called “breaking through zero” in China. Altogether, the Chinese athletes won 15 gold, 8 silver, and 9 bronze medals at those Games, ranking fourth overall in the gold medal tally. Athletes from Taiwan also won 2 bronzes.

Bid to Be Host City

Having successfully hosted the 11th Asia Games in 1990, the city of Beijing felt encouraged to bid for the right to host the Olympic Games. Early in 1991 the city government of Beijing and the National Olympic Committee of China decided to bid for the XXVII Olympic Games in 2000. Beijing was selected by the IOC as one of the candidate cities, along with Sydney, Berlin, Brasilia, Istanbul, and Manchester, Eng. At the 101st session of the IOC, held in Monte Carlo in 1993, the representatives of the candidate cities made their final presentations, and the 88 IOC members voted on the selection. Although a number of Western countries, citing human rights issues, refused to vote for Beijing, it was one of two cities left after the third round of voting. In the last round, Beijing lost to Sydney by the narrow margin of two votes.

In 1999 China launched its second bid. On September 6 the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Bid Committee was established, and in mid-2000, Beijing submitted its bid to the IOC. Included in it were answers to 22 questions from the IOC questionnaire as well as the plan and conceptual goals for the Games, which were to take as their motto “New Beijing, Great Olympics” and focus on being a “green” Olympics, a “hi-tech” Olympics, and the “people’s” Olympics. Of the 10 cities bidding for the 2008 Games, the IOC in August 2000 selected five candidates: Beijing, Toronto, Paris, Istanbul, and Ōsaka, Japan.

On January 13, 2001, the Beijing Olympic Games Bid Committee officially submitted its bid to the IOC. The three-volume report contained 18 themes, some of which were national, regional, and candidate-city characteristics; customs and immigration formalities; environmental protection and meteorology; finances; marketing; provisions for the Paralympic Games; plans for the Olympic Village; medical/health services; security; accommodations; transport; and guarantees. Support letters from national and city government leaders were also included. One month later an IOC evaluation team visited Beijing to determine the city’s capacity to host the Games. In an appraisal by the Evaluation Commission on May 15, 2001, Beijing’s bid was rated “excellent,” the city receiving the support of 94.9 percent of its residents to host the Games. The report concluded that a Beijing Olympics would “leave a unique legacy to China and to sports.”

At the 112th session of the IOC in Moscow, on July 13, 2001, the final decision was made. All five candidate cities made a 45-minute presentation and took 15 minutes of questions from committee members. Beijing was the fourth to give its presentation. After speeches by Vice Premier Li Lanqing and other representatives of the Beijing Olympic Games Bid Committee, Chinese IOC member He Zhengliang said:

Mr. President, dear colleagues, no matter what decision you make today, it will be recorded in history. However, one decision will certainly serve to make history. In your decision here today, you can move the world and China toward an embrace of friendship through sports that will benefit all mankind. By voting for Beijing, you will bring the Games—for the first time in the history of the Olympics—to a country with one-fifth of the world’s population and give to this billion people the opportunity to serve the Olympic Movement with creativity and devotion. If you honor Beijing with the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, I can assure you, my dear colleagues, in seven years Beijing will make you proud of the decision you make here today.

After the presentation, the IOC started to vote. In the first round, Beijing received 44 votes, Toronto 20, Istanbul 17, Paris 15, and Ōsaka 6. In the second round, Beijing had 56 votes, more than half of the total, Toronto 22, Paris 18, and Istanbul 9, with Ōsaka eliminated due to the results of the first round. Thus Beijing was honoured to be awarded the 2008 Olympic Games, the first time in Olympic history that a city in the world’s most populous country would host the world’s most important sporting event.

The People’s Republic of China (Chinese: Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo) is the largest of all Asian countries and has the largest population of any country in the world. Occupying nearly the entire East Asian landmass, it occupies approximately one-fourteenth of the land area of the Earth. Among the major countries of the world, China is surpassed in area by only Russia and Canada, and it is almost as large as the whole of Europe.

China has 33 administrative units directly under the central government; these consist of 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities (Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin), and 2 special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The island province of Taiwan, which has been under separate administration since 1949, is discussed in the article Taiwan. Beijing (Peking), the capital of the People’s Republic, is also the cultural, economic, and communications centre of the country. Shanghai is the main industrial city; Hong Kong is the leading commercial centre and port.

Within China’s boundaries exists a highly diverse and complex country. Its topography encompasses the highest and one of the lowest places on Earth, and its relief varies from nearly impenetrable mountainous terrain to vast coastal lowlands. Its climate ranges from extremely dry, desertlike conditions in the northwest to tropical monsoon in the southeast, and China has the greatest contrast in temperature between its northern and southern borders of any country in the world.

The diversity of both China’s relief and its climate has resulted in one of the world’s widest arrays of ecological niches, and these niches have been filled by a vast number of plant and animal species. Indeed, practically all types of Northern Hemisphere plants, except those of the polar tundra, are found in China, and, despite the continuous inroads of humans over the millennia, China still is home to some of the world’s most exotic animals.

Probably the single most identifiable characteristic of China to the people of the rest of the world is the size of its population. Some one-fifth of humanity is of Chinese nationality. The great majority of the population is Chinese (Han), and thus China is often characterized as an ethnically homogeneous country, but few countries have as wide a variety of indigenous peoples as does China. Even among the Han there are cultural and linguistic differences between regions; for example, the only point of linguistic commonality between two individuals from different parts of China may be the written Chinese language. Because China’s population is so enormous, the population density of the country is also often thought to be uniformly high, but vast areas of China are either uninhabited or sparsely populated.

With more than 4,000 years of recorded history, China is one of the few existing countries that also flourished economically and culturally in the earliest stages of world civilization. Indeed, despite the political and social upheavals that frequently have ravaged the country, China is unique among nations in its longevity and resilience as a discrete politico-cultural unit. Much of China’s cultural development has been accomplished with relatively little outside influence, the introduction of Buddhism from India constituting a major exception. Even when the country was penetrated by such “barbarian” peoples as the Manchu, these groups soon became largely absorbed into the fabric of Han Chinese culture.

This relative isolation from the outside world made possible over the centuries the flowering and refinement of the Chinese culture, but it also left China ill prepared to cope with that world when, from the mid-19th century, it was confronted by technologically superior foreign nations. There followed a century of decline and decrepitude, as China found itself relatively helpless in the face of a foreign onslaught. The trauma of this external challenge became the catalyst for a revolution that began in the early 20th century against the old regime and culminated in the establishment of a communist government in 1949. This event reshaped global political geography, and China has since come to rank among the most influential countries in the world.

Central to China’s long-enduring identity as a unitary country is the province, or sheng (“secretariat”). The provinces are traceable in their current form to the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). Over the centuries, provinces gained in importance as centres of political and economic authority and increasingly became the focus of regional identification and loyalty. Provincial power reached its peak in the first two decades of the 20th century, but, since the establishment of the People’s Republic, that power has been curtailed by a strong central leadership in Beijing. Nonetheless, while the Chinese state has remained unitary in form, the vast size and population of China’s provinces—which are comparable to large and midsize nations—dictate their continuing importance as a level of subnational administration.

Since the 1980s, China has been undergoing a radical and far-reaching economic transformation that has been spurred by a liberalized and much more open economic policy than in the first decades after 1949. As a result, China has become one of the world’s top industrial powers, and it has been engaged in a massive program to build and upgrade all aspects of its transportation system. In 2001, after Beijing had successfully won the bid to stage the 2008 Olympic Games, the pace of this construction work increased dramatically in and around the Beijing metropolis, as new sports venues, housing for athletes, hotels and office towers, and roads and subway lines were built. Six other cities were selected to host events during the Olympic Games: Hong Kong (equestrian events), Qingdao (yachting), and Qinhuangdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Tianjin (football [soccer]).

China Year in Review 2007

by Michael R. Fahey

Domestic Politics

In China the notable political events of 2007 were the holding of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 10th National People’s Congress in March and the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October. The former was the scene of some breaks with convention and a shift toward populist politics, while the October congress was widely seen as having failed to achieve the complete consolidation of power by Pres. Hu Jintao that most Chinese and foreign observers had expected.

The March National People’s Congress was attended by representatives from China’s provinces and municipalities. In a first, foreign journalists were given unrestricted access to People’s Congress members. Premier Wen Jiabao’s government report for 2006 was seen as a departure from the norm insofar as it addressed populist issues. Heading the bill were pressing domestic issues such as health care, education, and rural poverty, but the report also dwelled at some length on more-sensitive issues such as the environment and corruption, particularly in relationship to real estate—an area that had seen large-scale collusion between business and local political interests.

Wen paid particular attention in his report to the Three Rural Issues, or san nong, which referred to agriculture, rural communities, and peasants. He made a commitment to provide funding for infrastructure and new technologies to aid China’s more than 800 million rural dwellers, whose living standards and incomes dragged significantly behind China’s increasingly affluent urban population. Other issues addressed by Wen included the virtual absence of rural insurance and a new plan to provide basic rural health care. In terms of education, Wen made a commitment to abolish all tuition fees for rural children. In a rare hint at possible future political reform, Wen also spoke briefly of the need for “government transparency” and “public participation” in politics.

Perhaps of most significance at the Fifth Plenary Session, however, was the passing of the Property Law of the People’s Republic of China, which had failed to pass in seven readings since 2002 owing to content disputes. The law covered the creation, transfer, and ownership of property and was widely seen as an important development in the creation of a market economy and a civil code. Falling short of abolishing the constitutional right of the government to own all land, the law nevertheless provided new protections for of private homes, for businesses, and for farmers with long-term leases on land. The law, which covered both state and private ownership, had long been mired in controversy; more-conservative party members were critical of the legislation because it seemed to erode the fundamental principle that state ownership came first.

Hints at the need for political reform in the National People’s Congress came amid some unusually public debate on the subject in 2007. In a widely publicized speech in June, President Hu followed up on Wen’s March comments by acknowledging growing public demand for a say in political decisions. Although the president did not set an agenda for changes leading to increased participatory politics, he did say that changes should be expanded in an “orderly way.” In late September, in the Beijing magazine China Across the Ages, Li Rui, a 90-year-old former secretary to Mao Zedong, called for expanded citizens’ rights and limits to party power. Li argued that democratization needed to keep apace of market reforms if China was to maintain stability. His comments appeared on the eve of the CPC National Congress.

In the months ahead of the party congress, in which the CPC set government agenda for the next five years, an Internet crackdown was carried out. Across the country, police shut down IDCs (Internet data centres), the computers that Web sites rent to host their content. Meanwhile, ISPs (Internet service providers) voluntarily disabled forums and chat rooms that were possibly unacceptable to authorities. These moves came amid international criticism that Beijing was violating a commitment to the International Olympics Committee that it was prepared to make substantial improvements in human rights ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

The CPC National Congress began on October 15 in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. It voted in a new Central Committee, which endorsed a new Political Bureau and Political Bureau Standing Committee, the innermost circle of power in China. The Central Committee elevated four new members to the Political Bureau Standing Committee, but only one of them, Li Keqiang, party secretary of Liaoning province, owed his promotion to Hu’s patronage. Shanghai party boss Xi Jinping also joined the Political Bureau Standing Committee. Outranking Li, he was considered more likely to succeed Hu in 2012 as chief of state. Hu’s retired predecessor, Jiang Zemin, was said to have had broad influence ahead of the National Congress in the negotiations on the new leadership lineup.

A reshuffle of the People’s Liberation Army top brass, with older officers retiring in favour of a younger lineup, reflected Hu’s dominance as chairman of the Central Military Commission. Of particular note was that Hu promoted a number of generals with Taiwan-affairs experience—most prominently a new chief of general staff, Gen. Chen Bingde, who had previously served as head of the Nanjing Military Region, which had direct responsibility for the Taiwan Strait.

The promotions were a sign of increasingly icy relations with Taiwan ahead of a Taipei referendum to enlist support for a UN membership bid under the name Taiwan rather than the Republic of China. Under the leadership of Taiwanese Pres. Chen Shui-bian, the self-ruled island in 2007 continued to make no concessions to China’s claims of sovereignty, failing to open up Taiwan to Chinese tourism and refusing to allow the Olympic torch to pass through Taiwan on its way to Beijing.

The Economy

In 2007 China’s economy continued its meteoric rise. GDP grew at around 11 percent; the trade surplus approached $260 billion at year’s end; foreign exchange reserves were up a spectacular $135.7 billion in the first quarter of 2007 from year’s end 2006; and the Chinese renminbi continued to appreciate against the U.S. dollar at an annual rate of about 5 percent. In late September the Chinese government launched Asia’s biggest state-owned investment company—a $200 billion sovereign wealth fund—after massive trade surpluses boosted the country’s currency reserves to a record $1.33 trillion. Such good news came, however, amid a rising tide of voices warning of risks and challenges. The main areas of concern were surging inflation—which reached a 10-year high in 2007—an emerging stock-market bubble, the environmental fallout from China’s fast-growing economy, and corruption.

In August consumer-price inflation surged to 6.5 percent, while fixed-asset investment in urban areas jumped 26.7 percent in the first half of 2007 year on year, prompting China’s highest leadership to call on officials at all levels to take steps to stop the economy from overheating. The call followed a warning in May by the National Bureau of Statistics that the economy was “at risk of going from rapid growth to overheating.” Beijing responded at midyear by raising benchmark interest rates for the fourth time since April 2006 and raising banks’ reserve ration requirement for the eighth time since July 2006. Meanwhile, China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite index continued to reach record highs throughout 2007, having surged more than 400 percent in the past two years despite government attempts to cool the market by imposing transaction taxes and higher interest rates.

Chinese exporters struggled to redeem their image after a succession of product recalls of tainted goods. Safety scares emerged over Chinese shipments of dangerous and toxic lead-tainted toys as well as toxic toothpaste, seafood, and automotive tires, among other goods. Early in the year, more than 100 pet-food products were pulled from American shelves, and toy manufacturer Mattel, Inc., recalled nearly 20 million Chinese-made products, most of which contained lead-tainted paint. In July the former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration was executed for having taken $850,000 in bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies and for having approved fake drugs during his tenure (1998–2005). In September the government appointed Vice-Premier Wu Yi to head a panel tasked with overseeing a four-month war on tainted food, drugs, and exports.

Corruption hit the headlines with the prosecution in late July of former Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu. Chen had been the subject of a high-profile one-year investigation after some $390 million was found to be missing from Shanghai’s pension fund. Another 20 local officials were implicated. For some observers the prosecution was evidence that China was doing more to combat what was seen as an endemic problem, but for others the Chen case was simply the tip of the iceberg, and his prosecution was seen, at least in some quarters, as being politically motivated by his association with the so-called Shanghai clique, political rivals to President Hu and Premier Wen.

The environmental consequences of China’s economic boom came under increased government scrutiny. Reports emerged showing that just 1 percent of China’s approximately 560 million urban residents were breathing air considered safe by the European Union, and some 500 million people lacked access to clean drinking water. A 2007 World Bank report said that some 500,000 Chinese died annually as a result of pollution. Meanwhile, China was expected to become the global leader in terms of greenhouse emissions by the end of 2007. This toxic side effect of China’s economic success story was thought to be behind thousands of incidents of social unrest across the country, and in July the head of China’s environmental agency, Zhou Shengxian, called for a “struggle” against polluters. Most such incidents passed unreported, owing to a muzzled media, but in May thousands of people in Xiamen, Fujian province, took to the streets to protest a dirty petrochemical plant. Another sign of China’s growing environmental crisis was an outbreak of toxic cyanobacteria in Lake Tai in the Yangtze River delta; water supplies for nearly two million people were poisoned.

Foreign Relations

There were signs in 2007 that China was moderating its foreign policy—possibly ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008—so as to be more of a global “team player,” particularly in its most contentious foreign policy alignments: North Korea, Myanmar (Burma), and The Sudan.

China had long been North Korea’s most important ally, but after a test explosion of a nuclear device by North Korea in October 2006, China worked hard to bring North Korea to the negotiating table. Six-country negotiations early in 2007 succeeded in achieving a solution that saw North Korea agree to dismantle its nuclear program in return for compensation. China’s foreign policy came under intense pressure when monk-led protests erupted in Myanmar in September. Although China helped arrange for a UN envoy to visit Myanmar during the crisis and called on the government and demonstrators to show restraint, Beijing resisted calls for sanctions in keeping with its policy of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries. Despite Beijing’s opposition, additional sanctions were imposed by the U.S. and the EU independently of the UN as the crisis continued into October, and China increasingly came to be seen as Myanmar’s major backer despite the fact that India, Russia, and Thailand also had important relationships with the ruling junta in Yangon. For China, the long-term significance of the crisis was that its support for the Myanmar government was seen as support for other countries with controversial human rights records.

China also continued to oppose international sanctions against the Sudanese government but allowed UN Security Council Resolution 1769, authorizing the deployment of peacekeepers to The Sudan, and helped persuade the Sudanese government to accept them. Like Myanmar, The Sudan was an important source of natural resources, and China imported 7 percent of its oil supplies from there. In a sign of the close relations between the Sudanese government and China, President Hu visited The Sudan in February. China also committed to investing $20 billion in Africa in 2007. This commitment brought China closer to Zimbabwean Pres. Robert Mugabe, whose regime was increasingly dependent on Chinese aid.

Relations with the U.S. got off to a rocky start after China shot down a weather satellite during an unannounced test, demonstrating the country’s military-space capabilities. Continuing trade tensions led U.S. lawmakers to introduce legislation intended to force China to revalue its currency. While attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in September, U.S. Pres. George W. Bush accepted an invitation by Hu to attend the 2008 Olympics, but in October Bush angered Beijing by appearing in public with the Dalai Lama as the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader received a Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi condemned the appearance, stating that it “seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China’s internal affairs.”

Relations between Germany and China were also strained over the Dalai Lama after German Chancellor Angela Merkel met the spiritual leader in Berlin. In response to the meeting, China canceled human rights talks with Germany scheduled for December.

Sino-Japanese relations thawed as Premier Wen visited Japan in April and agreed to hold talks on disputes over territorial waters. The sudden resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September elevated Yasuo Fukuda, who succeeded Abe. Fukuda’s moderate views on China promised to help improve relations between the two economic giants. Fukuda also indicated that as prime minister he would not visit the Yasukuni Shrine (where Japan’s war dead, notably those of World War II, are enshrined); trips by Japanese leaders to the memorial had proved a perennial irritant in Sino-Japanese relations.

The Perils of China’s Explosive Growth (Special Report)

by Dorothy-Grace Guerrero

The China of 2007 was indeed a far cry from the country that in the 1950s Swedish Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted would remain mired in poverty. In anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing was undergoing a huge makeover that would show how fast change could happen in a country of 1.3 billion people. New subway lines were close to completion, and more skyscrapers were being added each month to the landscape to replace the fast-disappearing hutongs (“residential alleyways”). As the world’s fourth largest economy and third largest trading country, China accounted for approximately 5 percent of world GDP and had recently graduated in status to a middle-income country. Beijing was also emerging as a key global aid donor. In terms of production, China supplied more than one-third of the world’s steel, half of its cement, and about a third of its aluminum.

China’s achievements in poverty reduction from the post-Mao Zedong era, in terms of both scope and speed, were impressive; about 400 million people had been lifted from poverty. The standard of living for many Chinese was improving, and this led to a widespread optimism that the government’s goal of achieving an overall well-off, or Xiaokang, society, was possible in the near future.

The figures that illustrated China’s remarkable economic achievements, however, concealed huge and outstanding challenges that, if neglected, could jeopardize those very same gains. Many local and foreign-development analysts agreed that China’s unsustainable and reckless approach to growth was putting the country and the world on the brink of environmental catastrophe. China was already coping with limited natural resources that were fast disappearing. In addition, not everyone was sharing the benefits of growth—about 135 million people, or one-tenth of the population, still lived below the international absolute poverty line of $1 per day. There was a huge inequality between the urban and rural population, as well as between the poor and the rich. The increasing number of protests (termed mass incidents in China) was attributed to both environmental causes and experiences of injustice. If these social problems remained, it could imperil the “harmonious development,” or Hexie Fazhan, project of the government and eventually erode the Communist Party of China’s continued monopoly of political power.

The Challenge of Environmental Sustainability

China consumed more coal than the U.S., Europe, and Japan combined and was about to surpass, or had already surpassed, the U.S. as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Beijing was also the biggest emitter of sulfur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain. Chinese scholars blamed the increase in emissions on rapid economic growth and the fact that China relied on coal for 70 percent of its energy needs. More than 300,000 premature deaths annually were attributed to airborne pollution. The changing lifestyle of the increasing number of middle-class families also contributed to the problem. In Beijing alone, 1,000 new cars were added to the roads every day. Seven of the 10 most polluted cities in the world were located in China.

The UN 2006 Human Development Report cited China’s worsening water pollution and its failure to restrict heavy polluters. More than 300 million people lacked access to clean drinking water. About 60 percent of the water in China’s seven major river systems was classified as being unsuitable for human contact, and more than one-third of industrial wastewater and two-thirds of municipal wastewater were released into waterways without any treatment. China had about 7 percent of the world’s water resources and roughly 20 percent of its population. In addition, this supply was severely regionally imbalanced—about four-fifths of China’s water was situated in the southern part of the country.

The Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River delta, two regions well developed owing to recent export-oriented growth, suffered from extensive contamination from heavy-metal and persistent organic pollutants. The pollutants emanated from industries outsourced from the developed countries and electronic wastes that were illegally imported from the U.S. According to an investigation of official records conducted by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a domestic environmental nongovernmental organization, 34 multinational corporations (MNCs) with operations in China had violated water-pollution-control guidelines. These MNCs included PepsiCo, Inc., Panasonic Battery Co., and Foster’s Group Ltd. The IPE’s data were based on reports by government bodies at local and national levels.

China was beginning to realize, however, that its growth path was not cost-free. According to the State Environmental Protection Administration and the World Bank, air and water pollution was costing China 5.8 percent of its GDP. Though the Chinese government carried the responsibility for fixing the overwhelming environmental consequences of China’s breakneck growth, help, if offered, from the transnational companies and consumers from industrialized countries that benefited greatly from China’s cheap labour and polluting industries could also be utilized in the challenging cleanup task.

When the Chinese government in 2004 began setting targets for reducing energy use and cutting emissions, the idea of adopting a slower growth model and the predictions about the looming environmental disaster were not received with enthusiasm at first. By 2007, however, targets had been established for shifting to renewable energy, for employing energy conservation, and for embracing emission-control schemes. The target was to produce 16 percent of energy needs from alternative fuels (hydro and other renewable sources) by 2020.

The Social Justice Challenge

Inside China, people were more concerned about issues related to the problem of widespread inequality than they were about showcasing the upcoming Olympics. The Gini coefficient (which indicates how inequality has grown in relation to economic growth) had increased in China by 50 percent since the late 1970s. Less than 1 percent of Chinese households controlled more than 60 percent of the country’s wealth. This inequality was more pronounced when seen in urban versus rural per capita income. In the countryside, life was harsh, and people were poor. The ratio of urban versus rural per capita income grew from 1.8:1 in the early 1980s to 3.23:1 in 2003. (The world average was between 1.5:1 and 2:1.) Added to the problem of low income, Chinese rural residents also shouldered disproportionate tax burdens while having less access to public services, such as education and health care. Recently, the government abolished a number of taxes to help address poverty in the countryside.

The temporary migration from rural areas to the cities of 100 million–150 million Chinese peasants was not an easy transition. The rural migrant workers who kept factories and construction sites running were denied access to urban housing and to urban schooling for their children. Women migrant workers faced triple discrimination for being poor unskilled labour, female, and rural in origin. The anger and bitterness that set off riots and protests (reportedly more than 80,000 in 2006) in the countryside was not so much about poverty as it was about fairness. Agricultural land in China was communally owned. (In theory, each village owned the land around it, and each family held a small tract of land on a long-term lease.) In the past 20 years, however, urbanization had claimed 6,475,000 ha (about 16 million ac) of farmland; people saw their land being taken from them and then turned into homes that were sold to the new rich for several million dollars, and they witnessed local officials lining their own pockets. Meanwhile, they received little compensation in return and spent years away from home to live tenuous hand-to-mouth existences as factory or construction workers. Many were cheated of their wages by unscrupulous bosses. Given the reports of mass public protests, it was evident that many in China were clamouring for a more equitable distribution of China’s bounty from its two-decades-long growth.